by Wilbur Smith
Ralph's jaw hardened, his eyes went cold and hard as polished emeralds. He had got his hint from Jordan, and it hadn't cost him the price of one of Diamond Lil's fancy girls either. The lace curtain in the front window of Rose Cottage lifted, and a pretty dark-eyed lass with a creamy oval face and soft red mouth smiled out at him, shaking her ringlets in invitation to enter.
"Sit on it, dearie," Ralph told her grimly. "And keep it warm for me. I'll be back later." He ground out the half-smoked Romeo y Julieta under his heel, and strode away towards Aaron Fagan's office building. aran Fagan called them the "wolf pack."
"Mr. Rhodes keeps them chained in specially Aconstructed kennels, but lets them run every now and then, just to get a little taste of human flesh." They did not look particularly lupine. There were four of them, soberly dressed men whose ages ranged from late thirties to mid-fifties.
Aaron introduced each of them individually, and then collectively.
"These gentlemen are the De Beers Company permanent legal advisers. I think I am correct in saying that they also act on behalf of the British South Africa Company?" "That is correct, Mr. Fagan," said the senior counsellor, and his colleagues arranged themselves down the opposite side of the long table. Each of them placed his pigskin folder of papers neatly in front of him, and then, like a rehearsed vaudeville team, they looked up in unison. It was only then that Ralph recognized the wolflike glitter in their eyes.
"In what way can we be of assistance?" "My client is seeking clarification of the mining laws promulgated by the BSA Company," Aaron replied, and two hours later Ralph was groping desperately through a maze of jargon and convoluted legal-side-roads as he tried to follow the discussion, and his irritation was becoming increasingly obvious.
Aaron made a silent plea for patience, and with an effort Ralph stopped the angry words reaching his lips, instead he hunched further down in his chair, and in a deliberately boorish gesture of defiance, he placed one boot on the polished table top amongst the scattered legal papers and crossed his other ankle on top of it.
For another hour he listened, sinking lower and still lower in his chair and scowling at the lawyers opposite him, until Aaron Fagan asked humbly. "Does that mean in your opinion my client has not fulfilled the requirements of Section 27 B Clause Five read in conjunction with Section 7 Bis?" "Well, Mr. Fagan, we would first have to examine the question of due performance as set out in Section 31," replied the pack leader carefully, smoothing his moustache and glancing at his assistants who nodded brightly again in concert. "In terms of that section--2
Abruptly Ralph reached the far frontier of his patience. He brought his boots down off the table onto the floor with a crash that startled the four grey-suited men across the table. One of them knocked his folder onto the floor, and papers flew like the feathers when a red caracal cat gets into the henhouse.
"I may not know the difference between "due performance" and the aperture between your buttocks," announced Ralph in a voice that made the leader pale and shrink in size. Like all men of words, he had a horror Of violence, and that was what he sensed in the gaze with which Ralph fixed him. "However, I do know a wagonload of horse manure when I see one. And this, gentlemen, is grade-one horse manure you are giving me." "Mr. Ballantyne." One of the younger assistants was bolder than his chief. "I must protest your use of language! Your insinuation-" "It is not an insinuation," Ralph rounded on him. "I am telling you outright that you are a bunch of bandits, is that still not clear enough? How about robbers then, or pirates?" "Sir-" The assitant sprang to his feet, flushed with indignation, and Ralph reached across the table and caught him by the front of his stock. He twisted it sharply, cutting off the man's protest before it emerged.
"Pray be silent, my good fellow, I am speaking," Ralph admonished him, and then went on, "I am sick of dealing with little thieves. I want to speak to the head bandit. Where is Mr. Rhodes?" At that moment a locomotive down in the shunting yards whistled. The sound only just carried even in the silence which followed Ralph's question, and Ralph remembered Jordan's excuse for ending lunch the previous day. He released the struggling lawyer so abruptly that the man collapsed back into his chair, fighting for breath.
"Aaron," Ralph demanded. "What time is it?" "Eight minutes of noon." "He was fobbing me off the cunning bastard was fobbing me off!" Ralph whirled and ran from the boardroom.
There were half a dozen horses at the hitching rack outside the front of the De Beers building. Without checking his speed, Ralph decided on a big strong looking bay and ran to it. He clinched the girth, unhitched the reins, and turned its head out into the road.
"Hey, you," shouted the janitor. "That's Sir Randolph's mound" "Tell Sir Randolph he can have his suite back," Ralph called, and vaulted to the saddle. It had been a good choice, the bay drove strongly between his knees. They galloped past the mine st agings through the gap between the hillocks formed by the high tailing dumps and Ralph saw Mr. Rhodes" private train.
It was already crossing the points at the southern end of the yards and running out into the open country. The locomotive was hauling four coaches, steam spurted from the pistons of the driving wheels with each stroke. The signal arm was down and the lights were green. The locomotive was picking up speed swiftly.
"Come boy," Ralph encouraged the bay, swinging it towards the barbed-wire fence beside the track. The horse steadied himself, pricking his ears forward as he judged the wire. Then he went for it boldly. "Oh good boy." Ralph lifted him with hands and knees.
They flew over it with two feet to spare and landed neatly. There was flat open ground ahead, and the railway tracks curved slightly.
Ralph aimed to cut the curve. He lay against the horse's neck, watching the stony ground for holes. Five hundred yards ahead the train was pulling gradually away from them, but the bay ran on gamely.
Then the locomotive hit the gradient of the Magersfontein Hills and the huffing of the boiler changed its beat and slowed. They caught it a quarter of a mile from the crest, and Ralph pushed the bay in close enough for him to lean from the saddle and grab the handrail of the rear balcony on the last coach. Ralph swung across the gap and scrambled up onto the balcony. He looked back. The bay was already grazing contentedly on the Karroo bush beside the tracks.
"Somehow, I knew you were coming." Ralph turned quickly. Jordan was standing in the door of the coach. "I even had a bed made up for you in one of the guest compartments." "Where is he?" Ralph demanded.
"Waiting for you in the saloon. He watched your daredevil riding with interest. I won a guinea on you." Ostensibly the train was for the use of all the directors of De Beers, though none of them, apart from the Chairman of the Board, had yet shown the temerity to exercise that right.
The exteriors of the coaches and the locomotive were varnished in chocolate brown and gold. The interiors were as luxurious as unlimited expenditure could make them, from the fitted Wilton carpets and cut-glass chandeliers in the saloon to the solid gold and onyx fittings in the bathrooms.
Mr. Rhodes was stumped in a buttoned calf-leather chair beside the wide picture window in his private car. There were sheaves of paper on the Italian gold-embossed leather top of his bureau, and a crystal glass of whisky at his elbow. He looked tired and ill. His face was bloated and blotched with livid purple. There was more silver than ruddy gold in his moustache and wavy hair now, but his eyes were still that pale fanatical blue and his voice high and sharp.
"Sit down, Ballantyne," he said. "Jordan, get your brother a drink." Jordan placed a silver tray with a ship's decanter, a Stuart crystal glass and a matching claret jug of water on the table beside Ralph. While he did so, Mr. Rhodes addressed himself once more to the papers in front of him.
"What is the most important asset of any nation, Ballantyne?" he demanded suddenly, without looking up again. "Diamonds?" suggested Ralph mockingly, and he heard Jordan draw breath sharply behind him.
Then," said Mr. Rhodes, as though he had not heard. "Young, bright men, imbued durin
g the most susceptible period of their lives with the grand design. Young men like you, Ralph, Englishmen with all the manly virtues." Mr. Rhodes paused. "I am endowing a series of scholarships in my will. I want these young men to be chosen carefully and sent to Oxford University." For the first time he looked up at Ralph. "You see, it is utterly unacceptable that a man's noblest thoughts should cease, merely because the man dies. These will be my living thoughts.
Through these young men, I shall live for ever." "How will you select them?" Ralph asked, intrigued despite himself by this design for immortality, devised by a giant with a crippled heart.
"I am working on that now." Rhodes rearranged the papers on his bureau. "Literary and scholastic achievement, of course, success at manly sports, powers of leadership." "Where would you find them?" For the moment, Ralph had set aside his anger and frustration. "From England, all of them?" "No, no," Mr. Rhodes shook his shaggy leonine head. "From every corner of the Empire Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, even from America. Thirteen from America each year, one for every state." Ralph suppressed a smile. The colossus Of Africa, Of whom Mark Twain had written "When he stands on Table Mountain, his shadow falls on the Zambezi', had blind spots in his vast scheming mind. He still believed that America consisted of the original thirteen states. Such small imperfections gave Ralph courage to face him, to oppose him. He did not touch the decanter at his elbow. He would need all his wits to find any other weakness to exploit.
"And after men?" Rhodes asked. "What is the next most precious asset of a new land? Diamonds, as you suggest, or gold perhaps?" He shook his head. "It is the power that drives the railways, that turns the mine head gears that fuels the blast furnaces, the power that makes all the wheels go round. Coal." Then they were both silent, staring at each other. Ralph felt every muscle in his body under stress, the hackles at the back of his neck rising in an atavistic passion. The young bull facing up to the herd bull in their first trial of strength.
"It is very simple, Ralph, the coal deposits in Wankie's country must be retained in responsible hands." "The hands of the British South Africa Company?" Ralph asked grimly.
Mr. Rhodes did not have to reply. He merely went on staring into Ralph's eyes.
"By what means will you take them?" Ralph broke the silence.
"By any means that are necessary." "Legal or otherwise?" "Come on, Ralph, you know it is totally within my power to legalize anything I do in Rhodesia." Not Matabeleland or Mashonaland, Ralph noted, but Rhodesia. The megalomanic dream of grandeur was complete. "Of course, you will be compensated land, gold claims whatever you choose.
What will it be, Ralph?" Ralph shook his head. "I want the coal deposits that I discovered and that I pegged. They are mine. I will fight you for them." Rhodes sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Very well, I withdraw my offer of compensation. Instead, let me point out a few facts to you of which you are probably unaware. There are two Company linesmen who have sworn an affidavit before the Administrator in Bulawayo that they saw you personally cutting telegraph lines south of the town on Monday the fourth at 4 p-m."
"They are lying," said Ralph, and turned to look at his brother. Only he could have made the deduction and pointed it out to Mr. Rhodes.
Jordan sat quietly in an armchair at the end of the saloon. He did not look up from the shorthand pad on his lap, and his beautiful face was serene. Ralph tasted the sourness of treachery on the back of his tongue, and he turned back to face his adversary.
"They may be lying," Mr. Rhodes agreed softly. "But they are prepared to testify under oath." "Malicious damage to Company property," Ralph raised an eyebrow. "Is that a capital offence now?"
"You still do not understand, do you? Any contract made under a deliberate misrepresentation can be set aside by a court of law. If Roelof Zeederberg could prove that when you and he signed your little agreement, you were fully aware of the epidemic of rinderpest which is sweeping Rhodesia," (that name again.) "and that you had committed a criminal act to keep that fact from him.-" Mr. Rhodes did not finish.
Instead he sighed again and rubbed his chin, the silver stubble rasped under his thumb. "On the fourth, your father, Major Zouga Ballantyne, sold five thousand head of breeding stock to Gwaai Cattle Ranches, one of my own companies. Three days later, half of them were dead of rinderpest, and the rest will soon be destroyed by the Company anti-rinderpest measures. Already Zeederberg Brothers have lost sixty per cent of the bullocks you sold them, they have two hundred wagons and their loads stranded on the great north road. Don't you see, Ralph, both your contract of sale and your father's could be declared null and void. Both of you forced to refund the purchase monies you received and to take back thousands of dead and dying animals." Ralph's face was stony, but his skin had yellowed like a man five days in fever. Now with a jerky movement he poured the crystal tumbler half full of whisky, and he swallowed a mouthful as though it were broken glass. Mr. Rhodes let the subject of rinderpest lie between them like a coiled adder, and he seemed to go off in another direction.
"I hope that my legal advisers followed my instructions and apprised you of the mining and prospecting laws that have been adopted for the Charter territories. We have decided to apply the American law, as opposed to the Transvaal law." Mr. Rhodes sipped from his glass, and then twisted it between his fingers. The base had left a wet circle on the expensive Italian leather. "There are some peculiar features of these American laws. I doubt that you have had an opportunity to study all of them, so I will take the liberty of pointing one out to you. In terms of Section 23, any mineral claim pegged between sunset of one day and sunrise of the following day shall be void and the title in those claims liable to be set aside by an order of the mining commissioner. Did you know that?" Ralph nodded his head. "They told me." "There is an affidavit on the Administrator's desk at this moment, made in the presence of a Justice of the Peace by one Jan Cheroot, a Hottentot in the domestic service of Major Zouga Ballantyne, to the effect that certain claims registered by the Rhodesian Land and Mining Company, of which you are the major shareholder, which claims are known as the Harkness Mine, were pegged during the hours Of darkness, and therefore liable to be declared void." Ralph started so that his glass rattled against the silver tray, and whisky slopped over the rim.
"Before you chastise this unfortunate Hottentot, let me hasten to assure you that he believed he was acting in the best interests of you and his master when he swore this affidavit." This time the silence drew out for many minutes, while Mr. Rhodes peered out of the window at the bleak tree, less sun bleached spaces of the Karroo under a milky blue sky.
Then quite suddenly Mr. Rhodes spoke again. "I understand that you have already committed yourself to the purchase of mining machinery for the Harkness Mine, and that you have signed personal sureties for over thirty thousand pounds. The choice before you is simple enough then.
Give up all claim to the Wankie coal deposits, or lose not only them, but the Zeederberg contract and the Harkness claims. Walk away still a rich man by any standards, or-, Ralph let the unfinished statement rest for ten beats of his racing heart, and then he asked. "Or?" "Or else I will destroy you, utterly," said Mr. Rhodes. Calmly he met the ferocious hatred in the eyes of the young man before him. He was inured by now both to adulation and to hatred, such things were meaningless when measured against the grand design of his destiny. Yet he could afford a placating word.
"You must understand that there is nothing personal in this, Ralph" he said. "I have nothing but admiration for your courage and determination. As I said earlier, it is in young men like you that I place my hope for the future. No, Ralph, it is not personal. I simply cannot allow anything or anybody to stand in my way. I know what has to be done, and there is so little time left in which to do it." The instinct to kill came upon Ralph in a black unholy rage. He could clearly imagine his fingers locked into the swollen throat, feel his thumbs crushing the larynx from which that shrill cruel voice rose.